


drown out my hearts’ beating

by V_fics



Series: V's Best Enemies fics [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Mentioned The Master (Dhawan), Mind Games, Other, Post-Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Pretending to be Human, Secret Identity, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_fics/pseuds/V_fics
Summary: His grip was firm and tangible and in the moment it grounded her to the present. She was here.Theywere here. In 2007. In an alternate universe that was basically the same as her own but just slightly different enough that she could maybe interfere from the sidelines and spare a lot of people a lot of pain and trauma and death.And here the Master was, staring into her eyes, completely unaware of who she really was, helping her up after who he believed was a silly little human slipped on ice in front of him.She could almost believe he were kind if he wasn’t radiating condescension off every movement in his body.Her hearts beat like the drums in his head, and she flashed a cheery, simple human smile.“Jane,” she said. “My name is Jane Foreman.”
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Simm)
Series: V's Best Enemies fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998526
Comments: 28
Kudos: 117





	drown out my hearts’ beating

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to mysticaltorque for inspiring this AU and MonkyRebel for proofreading and enabling me T^T

A long time ago, at least long enough that they’d still been a man, the Doctor had been asked if he’d ever had a favourite and least favourite year. He had many, everyone does, but just three favourite years into the list he’d spiralled into ramblings about the different ways intergalactic societies classified years and the UTC—short for ‘universal time classification’, not to be confused with the Terran timezone ‘Coordinated Universal Time’. Discussion had then veered onto the English language as the acronym didn’t match the order of the words it represented, and consequentially, the Doctor never got around to talking about his least favourite years.

That had been anywhere from three-hundred to a thousand-three-hundred years ago in the Doctor’s personal timeline—she’d scared even her fellow Time Lords with her time spent in the Confession Dial and she was perfectly happy to never tell anyone else about it—and the Doctor as she now was (blonde, with far too short of legs, and bangs that fell over her face like a curtain she would sometimes hide behind) could confidently say that of all the years she despised the most with regards to Earth: it was 2008.

She’d landed in a grimy alleyway in the middle of London, and as her brain booted back up, she could smell the spilt garbage and turn-of-the-millennium cars and, yes, this was at least the early oughts. Very much not her favourite time period. Even if the ‘modern’ tech designs were adorable.

She pulled herself to her feet and brushed off the dirt and litter. There was a cigarette butt in her hair. She’d tried smoking once, on one of her first visits to Earth. Susan had thought it ‘cool’ and the fastest way to get a child not to do a thing is to do it yourself.

Her back ached. Was she getting old? Maybe. The hard concrete floor wasn’t an ideal landing spot, but the alleyway was empty and at least she didn’t have to explain the wormhole that’d opened up so the TARDIS could fling her through the doors and then vanish.

She spun around in a circle, then reached for a brick wall to steady herself. No TARDIS, just flattered cardboard boxes and some dumpster bins. The Doctor grimaced and squinted at the sky. It was day time, not a lot of clouds from this view, and just a little bit chilly. There was a bit of frost on the ground. She fumbled around her pockets for her very-not-2000s phone.

Without the TARDIS in range, the smartphone threw a bit of a fuss about outdated network signals, then connected to the local London cellular towers and reset the date.

_January 20th, 2007._

Oh, this was _not_ funny at all. 2008 was her most hated year, but 2007 lead to 2008. She had at least two major invasions to not intervene in _and_ her younger self to avoid before they even got to 2008.

If Graham were here, he’d agree with her that 2008 was a rubbish year. Even if he didn’t remember humanity’s “first contact” with the Toclafane, or the rest of the alien invasions no one liked to linger on, he would at least remember the global recession. Yaz and Ryan on the other hand would have only just turned ten human years old.

Now that was an endearing thought: tiny Yaz and Ryan! They’d probably be in school doing primitive human studies like calculus and quantum and… whatever humans learnt at the age of 10. The Doctor had been burning the ends of his hair off in experiments until he got fed up with tying it back and chopped it short, but she imagined human children didn’t really play with star samples as much as Gallifreyans did.

The Doctor let out a breath, then breathed in and grimaced at the dumpster smell. Better get moving and figure out what was going on. If the TARDIS had dumped her out of here, then it must have been for _some_ reason.

Or maybe she was still in a tizzy about regenerating inside of her again… She really should stop doing that. But it wasn’t her fault—

Rambling, she was getting off track again. First, she needed to get out of this alleyway.

It was strange how much had changed in a single decade. Smartphones had not yet taken hold, people still used physical buttons on rigid, bulkier devices, and everyone’s headphones still had wires! Best of all, however, was that newspapers were still in wide circulation and the Doctor could still see pedestrians and passengers carrying them around.

Smartphones were useful, but the Internet was forever changing, whereas she could simply pick up a newspaper, sit on a bench, and ground herself in the present.

January 2007… Yes, pinstripes and sideburns had regenerated the last Christmas and fended off the Sycorax and—

**Harriet Jones denies rumours of debilitating illness.**

The Doctor folded up the newspaper and buried her face in it. That’s right. Harriet Jones was currently being hounded by the press because of her past self’s reaction to her shooting down the fleeing Sycorax ship. By the end of the year she’d have lost most of her support, be ousted from office, and then replaced by one Harold Saxon by the dreaded year 2008.

She really didn’t like the 2000s, or reflecting on her past, or crossing back into her own timeline. It all just ended in a mess of introspective self-loathing, of all the things she could have done differently, of all the things that were now set in stone and would never change.

(And she’d tried before, many times. It never worked out the way she wanted it to.)

Time was not hers to change, even if she was again one of the Last.

Now there was something she’d have in common with the Doctor of this time period.

She pulled the newspaper from her face and flipped through it. Why would the TARDIS send her here? Just to ruin her day by reminding her of the past? There had to be something else, some sort of sinister secret alien shenanigans that her past selves had never dealt with until her.

No, the news was very boring and normal. Someone won a film award, some politician announced their election campaign, some celebrity died of old age. Incredibly mundane. Very Earthly.

She pulled out her TARDIS key and a string of twine and looped it around her neck before pulling out her too-advanced smartphone. The last thing she wanted was for some stranger to chat her up while she was using definitely un-2007 technology.

The phone groaned and lagged, its hardware intended for the LTE of the future rather than EDGE of the present, but she gave it a nudge with the sonic and it acquiesced, loading websites very much so intended for 2007 desktop computers. People were still using Flash in this year and all the fonts were still painfully simple and serif. News sites were still slow and social media hadn’t boomed in the way it would in the 2010s yet. Everything was endearingly dated.

The Doctor frowned. There were no articles on the Slitheen invasions, no ruined Big Ben, no Downing Street explosion, nothing at all. She tapped away at the phone screen.

No Christmas invasion by the Sycorax either. No killer star. No shoot down by Torchwood.

“Oh, no.”

She pocketed her phone and stood, tucking the newspaper under her arm. Perhaps the phone was just playing tricks on her, angry at being downgraded. It was never wise to try and mess with technology through time. There would be one place she could count on existing anywhere in London, however, one place that would have documented everything.

The Doctor didn’t have the greatest of associations with libraries. She kept returning things late and racking up the worst late fees. So, her favourite library across the world universe was still the one in the TARDIS, and the TARDIS herself very much so enjoyed organising and reorganising all the books and not-books they’d collected over the millennia. At the least, the TARDIS would only scold her if she misplaced a book or dropped it in the swimming pool, whereas the libraries of New New York still had the pretty one with the curls banned for life because he’d checked out an old manuscript for research purposes, ran into trouble of the amnesiac kind, and never gave it back until three incarnations later.

But, as of the current moment, she was very much so not banned from London’s libraries, at least not in 2007, which gave her all the rights to peruse the newspaper archives of the local branch.

Nada. Zilch. Rien. There was absolutely nothing on the Slitheen or the Sycorax. Humanity was prone to immediately forgetting their invasions but they wouldn’t have forgotten it the day of, as it was literally happening. They’d at least give it an hour or two after the whole thing was over.

Something was very—

“Um, excuse me, miss?”

She looked up from the pile of newspapers. A librarian was staring at her with a polite smile. The Doctor felt at the key around her neck. Still there, still working. How had this human seen through her perception filter?

“Yes?” she asked.

“Would you mind lowering your voice a bit? The library is meant to be a quiet space and you’re disturbing the other patrons.”

The Doctor blinked a few times. Librarians. Of course.

“Sorry,” she gave a sheepish smile. “I think aloud and get carried away. I’ll keep it to myself.”

The librarian’s smile widened and she nodded her head and left. The Doctor turned back to the papers. Where was she again? She’d lost her train of thought.

Oh yes.

Something was _very_ wrong.

This must have been what the TARDIS was leading her to, something wrong with time where the invasions of 2006 hadn’t happened. Had someone messed with it, stopped them from happening? It would have caused a paradox in her own personal timeline if it had. She would have noticed. She would be the only one who could.

(Besides… him. But she didn’t want to think about _him_ when she still had Saxon to potentially deal with. She would get to that later.)

But, no TARDIS, nothing but whatever was in her pockets, she couldn’t quite track any temporal fluctuations. She frowned and pulled out her phone again. She could possibly try, but…

She looked around the crowded streets of London. She definitely needed to find a place where she could work undisturbed. Could she book a hotel room? That would be awfully human of her. She had the psychic paper and probably some British pounds dated before 2007. Wait, humans didn’t pay for hotels in cash, did they? Well, they did if they were hiding from someone. Which she technically was.

No, she didn’t need to stay a night anywhere, she just needed about an hour to herself where she could fiddle around with clearly futuristic and alien technology. Somewhere no one would find her.

The Doctor frowned. She had an idea, and she really wasn’t going to like it.

The street still existed, which was a good sign. Whatever had happened to the Slitheen and the Sycorax hadn’t affected Me’s trap street. Or perhaps it was only time’s ripple effect still passing through. She had two theories and neither of them were very reassuring.

She’d made it three steps into the street when a familiar force field popped up around her, and all the visible residents centred on her.

“Identify yourself,” a synthesised voice said from the crowd. “Remove your perception filter and state your purpose here.”

The assorted aliens stared at her. She appeared human to them. She wouldn’t begrudge them for that, she doubted any Time Lord would ever take refuge here. She took off the TARDIS key and slipped it back into her pocket.

“I am not a human, not looking for refuge, I’m just looking for Mayor Me.”

The residents murmured and beeped and clicked amongst each other.

“And who exactly, are you?”

There she was, with her deceptively soft and youthful voice. Me stepped out from the crowd, as elegant and stern as ever. She was definitely less… short than the Doctor remembered, but she’d chalk that up to losing sixteen centimetres in height between incarnations.

“Me! Wonderful to see you again. Sort of. You’re not done with the eyebrows yet, you’ll see him again in about ten years, but—”

“I asked,” Me’s voice was hard and commanding and very much unfriendly, “Who are you?”

She straightened and collected herself. Right, she forgot how slow human minds were. Sooner she got the re-introductions out of the way, sooner she could go on to testing her theory.

“I’m the Doctor.”

But Me frowned and said those cursed words:

“Doctor who?”

On the plus side, it meant that two very public alien invasions not happening wasn’t the result of someone messing with time, and she could rule out any big paradoxes or temporal complications in her personal timeline.

On the down side, she was almost certainly in very, _very_ big trouble. And not just because Me had dragged her into a vacant room and tied her to a chair.

“So you’re telling me that you’re from an alternate universe, and you want to use a space on the trap street to verify that.”

Me’s heels clicked on the barren floor as she circled the Doctor’s chair. Her voice was chilly and unwelcoming. The Doctor was tempted to respond in turn, especially since she’d been tied to a chair of all things, but this Me wasn’t the Me of her universe, the one who’d sold her out to the Time Lords and gotten Clara—

Well.

As far as this Me knew, she was a complete stranger, a human-passing alien trying to gain entry into a secured space. She wasn’t trying to be a resident, and she could do a lot of damage if she told anyone about the trap street’s existence.

This might have been a bad idea, now that she thought about it.

“I’m really sorry, Me, if I’d known this was an alternate universe to begin with, I wouldn’t have come here. I promise you I don’t mean any harm to the residents here or to you. I would appreciate being given a space to test my theory, but if not, I’m perfectly happy to leave of my own will.”

“If you’ve already been to the trap street of your universe, then you know I have a policy here.” Me’s voice was sinking lower.

The Doctor let out a breath and frowned. She really didn’t like the odds here.

“Yes, but Retcon only removes memories in reverse chronological order,” she said, digging the heels of her boots into the floor. “Even if you remove my memory of the past day you would never have enough to be able to get all the way back to the first time I met you on this street. And that’s if this concoction even works on me. We’ve got messy brains, us Time Lords.”

Me glowered at her and the Doctor wondered if they’d ever resembled each other. Both looking too young, too harmless to be as old and bloodied as they were inside. The Doctor enjoyed hiding behind flamboyant personae, but Me hadn’t coped nearly as well.

“I’ve heard of the Doctor,” Me said softly, stopping before her. “Some say he’s a monster. Other say he’s a hero.”

The Doctor gave her a wan smile. “If the me of this world is any bit like myself, I can see why.”

Me didn’t return it. “There was even an institution created specifically to protect the Earth from him and other aliens.”

“Yeah, I’m assuming that’s Torchwood,” the Doctor’s words dropped to a mutter. Early 2007, Torchwood One was still kicking.

“Yes. They’re an immense threat to my street. They don’t care that most of these residents would leave if they could, they simply want to rid this world of alien influence and keep what’s left to themselves.”

“They’re scared, Me,” the Doctor leaned forward, her voice going soft. “Torchwood was founded because I saved Queen Victoria from an alien werewolf and humans got scared. They’re always scared of things they don’t understand and if they never move past ‘scared’ they’ll never give anyone else a chance to prove themselves. Even if I disapprove of your methods and your policies, I really do admire your intentions in creating the trap street. You’ve done really well.”

Me’s gaze softened, just a little bit, and the Doctor wondered if anyone had ever thanked her for her work, besides those who were already in her debt. It was a little different, that.

“Are you comfortable with telepathy?”

Me’s eyes hardened again. “What do you plan?”

“I said that I hadn’t come here looking for refuge, and I wasn’t lying, but that’s only because I’ve already made Earth my refuge.”

She closed her eyes, and familiar words came to mind.

“I walk your Earth, I breathe your air… Earth is my home, just as much as this street is yours. Please, I would like to leave with my memories. I need to figure out what’s going on in this universe and why I’m here, and then how to get back.”

Me stared at her, and the Doctor stared back. How strange, those eyes _were_ familiar. They really were far too alike. In her past, it had been the Doctor’s fault Ashildr became immortal. In this world, perhaps not, but Me suffered all the same.

Finally, Me stepped forwards, one step, then another, until the Doctor had to crane her neck upwards to look at her. Then, Me leaned over, and undid the binds.

“I’ll let you go with your memories, and you can have this space to do your experimenting,” she said, stepping back and coiling the loosened rope in her hands. “On one condition.”

“Which is?” The Doctor stood from the chair and cracked a knuckle.

Me fixed her with a strange look, then walked for the room door. Her hand rested on the handle.

“Come…” she began, then paused. “Come talk to me while you’re still here, and tell me when you’re going home.”

“Me?” The Doctor blinked.

“Before the trap street, I would have asked you to take me with you,” Me said against the door, not looking back at her. “I dreamed of being able to run away to the stars, to run away from this planet, but… there are people here who depend on me, who need me, so… all I ask of you, is that while you’re here… could you keep me company for a bit?”

“Oh, Me…” The Doctor crossed the room and stopped short of the immortal. “I can definitely do that for you.”

Me met her eyes, old, haggard, exhausted, then cleared her throat and straightened.

“You asked me if I was comfortable with telepathy?” Her voice was clear and polite. Not yet friendly, but nowhere near as cold as before. “Why?”

“Because I can show you how we met, in my world. I don’t think it was the same as this world, but you don’t remember your origins either, like the Me of my world.”

“Yes, I…” Me’s brows furrowed in accusation for a moment, guarded and defensive, and scared. Then, she let out a breath and shook her head. “I don’t think I need to know that. It doesn’t really matter where I was from. I’m Me, I am the mayor of this street, I keep these aliens safe and it will be what I do for as long as it is necessary. I don’t need to know my past, Doctor.”

The Doctor smiled softly, and nodded.

“I’m glad you know where you stand, Me. It’s a good feeling to have.”

Me nodded too, then pulled the door open and left. The Doctor looked around the vacant room.

Well, she had a chair, and that was a start.

She was indeed in an alternate universe. The differences were all in other parts of the universe, namely the change in Sycoraxian history that meant invasion was never planned, and the Slitheen diving into a civil war that kept them far away from Earth, as well as a handful of other changes to specific alien worlds. But for Earth’s history, she wouldn’t know any major differences until she either got into Torchwood or UNIT’s files, or she met up with her parallel self.

Who, from what she gathered from the renegade Cyberman living on the street, seemed to be rather much the same as she herself. The aliens had heard of the Last Great Time War and it seemed like the Doctor had once again been responsible for ending it. Whether or not it had stuck was still anybody’s guess.

That wasn’t really the biggest issue here. Because alternate universe or not, Harold Saxon was on record as having joined the Ministry of Communications, and the Doctor was quite sure she couldn’t find any concrete information that he was a real human being. It could have been one of those inter-universal coincidences, like how Ashildr still became Me even though she’d never met the Doctor (or at least, chose to forget it for whatever reason). The Harold Saxon of this world could very well be an ordinary human man.

But the Doctor wasn’t known for trusting easily. Especially not when it came to the Master.

“Hey Me!”

The Doctor poked her head into Me’s office. The human jumped at her voice and leapt from her chair. She was looking over some important looking documents and fixed the Doctor with a glare.

“Wait, sorry, should have knocked, right?”

Me’s glare faltered. “No, you just surprised me. No one else on this street has the audacity to startle me.”

“Oh, I see,” the Doctor had an uneasy feeling about that, “anyway I’m just leaving to go do some investigating, thought I should let you know. If you need me I can give you my number. It should work here. I hope. Phone’s been a bit upset about the older tech. The difference a decade makes! I’m rambling again, aren’t I?”

“I’m getting used to it,” Me answered tersely. “But thank you for warning me. Before you leave, there is something I need to ask of you.”

The Doctor tilted her head and stepped across the threshold. Me pulled open a desk drawer and took out a file.

“For aliens who can live as humans, I don’t let them stay on the trap street, but I can arrange for them to obtain legal documents to blend in. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.” She handed the folder over.

“Oh, Me…” the Doctor flipped through it. It was a form to fill out for replacing a lost ID card, passport, just about anything that certified someone existed.

“I have contacts. It’s not magic, but if you’re without your TARDIS, I imagine you don’t have much else on you, never mind something that’d be valid this year, yes?”

“I was actually just gonna use my psychic paper to get through everything,” the Doctor admitted. “But you’ve given me something of an idea.”

“Have I?”

“Yes… It’s still forming in my head, might be a terrible idea, but I do have to ask, your contacts, they’re in the national registry business, right? Can you get them to check an identity for me?”

Me stared at her. “I’m not in the habit of offering extraneous favours, Doctor. I’m afraid I can’t take that risk.”

“Sorry, right, Torchwood and everything.”

She’d say something about how Torchwood One wouldn’t be around for much longer, but she wasn’t entirely certain the Cyberman attacks would still happen. It would require an alternate Pete’s World to go with this one, and that was just unlikely.

“It’s fine,” she waved a hand and returned the folder. “I might come back for those files, but first I need to check that I even need to blend in as a human, at least—that deeply.”

“I understand,” Me said politely.

“Oh, right,” the Doctor fished out her smartphone. “Give me your number, or you can text me! Don’t think we have WhatsApp yet, or even the App Store, but you’ll like emojis in about three years!”

Me only gave her a bemused smile.

Hacking into a 2007 human database was child’s play by Time Lord standards, even if her phone continued to whine about such a menial task as searching up Harold Saxon’s legal address. The Master probably got around things by mind controlling others; it wouldn’t matter once he got the Archangel Network installed and just about all of humanity bent over backwards to adore him.

There was something very fragile and vulnerable about being human. She’d never ever do it again. But the Master had been so sweet as a human, so—normal. The old man Yana seemed altruistic and well-intentioned, desperate to save his fellow beings, to help escape entropy and the end of the universe. But then the Master poked his head back out and all was lost.

(Maybe, in another life, they could have stayed friends.)

The Doctor still wasn’t quite happy taking the Tube and other methods of human transportation, but a little bit of exercise never hurt anyone and if that plan in her head kept growing, she really needed to seem human enough, and that meant piling on to public transportation like your average citizen.

Harold Saxon had rented out an apartment downtown. It was rather middle-upper class, with those security guards at the lobby and fancy pools and gyms and whatever. The Doctor couldn’t really imagine the Master swimming; they both had a nasty history with water.

The men sat at the front desk didn’t give her a second glance, or even a first, not even as she gave the lobby a once-over before heading for the elevator. She really didn’t want to know who the Master had brutalised to wrangle this accommodation. If she had hope, perhaps he only hypnotised the super into forgetting the room wasn’t vacant.

She took the lift up to the 19th floor. It had fancy mirrors and lighting and golden bars and she peered away at her reflection. She would be needing new clothes, if she really went through with her plan. The Master wouldn’t be the only one she had to convince of being human.

The elevator dinged and a soft recorded voice informed her she’d made it to her intended floor. She stepped out and turned into a long, neatly carpeted hallway. The doors on either side were spread out, indicating the individual rooms were larger than simply a single bedroom and kitchen.

So dramatic of him, if he weren’t human. She tsked and made her way down to room number six. The lock clicked away under her sonic and opened with a beep.

The light turned on automatically, revealing a completely empty apartment. The kitchen was sterile and the living room had no signs of living in it. She poked around and even the bathroom was disused. There were two bedrooms, one bigger than the other, but there was no furniture, no beds, nothing at all, except for…

“Yeah, he’s way too dramatic,” she muttered, walking into the bigger bedroom.

Propped up within the massive walk-in closet was the TARDIS. It had definitely been materialised within, although it would be funny to imagine the Master trying to lug it through the too-small doorway. It was the pinstripes’ TARDIS, she could tell from the very exterior; the blue was more faded and rickety.

She pressed a hand against the wood. Her oldest companion hummed beneath her fingers, curious at her.

“Hello, old girl,” she whispered. “I’m not quite the madman you know, but… I’m still him, and I’d still like your help, if you will.”

The blue box sang in her head and the wooden door gave way. For the first time all day, the Doctor felt a real smile pull at her lips.

The Doctor stepped into the TARDIS and the smile dropped from her face. The Master had changed the desktop theme. What nerve! It wasn’t even _his._ (Technically, it wasn’t really hers either, but she felt properly offended on behalf of her counterpart in this world.)

The old girl beeped grumpily and the Doctor huffed in agreement. She didn’t really like her grunge phase either—seriously, metal grate floors? Her old self was asking to cut his hands or clothes on it—but the Master was pushing it. Gone were the coral and the orange, instead everything was back to the usual roundels and hexagon patterns, only a deep, monochromatic black and gold instead of the classic white. It reeked of the Master’s taste in style.

She took the path down one of the hallways. Everything had had its style changed to suit the Master. The old living room had _velvet_ furniture. Had he any idea how awful it was to sit on velvet? Of course he didn’t, he’d just spend his time posing around the damn thing rather than actually using it.

Oh, she was going to _strangle_ him.

After talking herself down from leaving a passive-aggressive message or sneakily changing the velvet to leather, the Doctor returned to the console room and checked out the TARDIS log. The Master had made a few trips to Utopia again, and she could find notes for the Toclafane’s exterior shell. However, it hadn’t looked like he’d actually gotten around to implementing any of them, or at least not bringing them into 2007, so that was a good sign.

She headed into the closet and dug out some human clothes. She still couldn’t really tell the difference between 2000s and 2010s fashion, but she doubted the Master would either. If anything she could accidentally bring hi-low skirts into fashion a few years early.

(Not that she wore skirts, though, not even before this body. The long ones reminded her a bit too much of Gallifreyan robes, and the short ones required leggings, and none of her incarnations had ever been one for skin-tight anything.)

“What do you mean I’ll need more than that?” she asked the TARDIS. It beeped back at her. “Oh, I hate human customs. Can’t I just wear the same three suits or something?”

The TARDIS hummed in a negative. The Doctor sighed. She’d have to go proper shopping then later, maybe she could ask Me for help. That’s what humans did right? As a sort of social bonding thing? She’d never gone shopping with the fam, mostly because she didn’t really need anything else added to the TARDIS’ closet. Did Yaz and Ryan go together when she wasn't around?

Fine, fine, she’d have to learn this as a part of being human anyway. The Chameleon Arch almost sounded like a good idea now, in light of all the intricacies she’d have to pick up on.

The Plan was still half-planned, however, she had time to work it out. For now, she had some extra clothes to change into, her old outfit stashed away, a vortex manipulator she’d nicked off a Time Agent some incarnations ago, a handful of knick-knacks that might come in handy for her Plan, and an assortment of jelly babies that were _probably_ still safe to eat after several hundred years in the TARDIS kitchen—all of which she packed into a period-appropriate briefcase that seemed to go well enough with her new suit.

If she wanted to be human, she really couldn’t keep pulling stuff out of her pockets.

(Whether or not she would stop making her pockets bigger on the inside was… still in question. Human understanding of space was so limiting!)

Worst of all were the dress shoes. The Doctor hated wearing dress shoes. Even when they had to go undercover to find Barton, she’d just thrown on a pair of black boots. But the TARDIS insisted laces didn’t go well with her suit, so she had to either wear heeled boots (absolutely not, she knew first-hand from Susan how dangerous adventuring in heels could be! Not that it stopped Amy or Missy or Clara though…) or dress shoes. So dress shoes she’d put on. Even if they made her ankles feel overexposed.

The Plan was looking grimmer by the second.

She returned to the console room, briefcase in hand, and looked back at the TARDIS column. Despite the Master’s horrific redesign, the TARDIS was still breathing, still alive, still at ease. And one day it would all change.

“I’m sorry, old girl,” she said, placing a hand on the console. “The me of this universe is trying to get back to you as fast as he can, and when he does, we’ll be ready to save you and everyone on Earth.”

The TARDIS hummed solemnly, and the Doctor gave a morose sigh.

She couldn’t interfere too much, but she could cut some parts short, if she was very, very careful.

She had made it all the way back down to the lobby and out the front door without any trouble when a taxi cab pulled up and Harold fucking Saxon stepped out. He almost looked _human_ , with a winter-appropriate overcoat and a politely friendly tone to the cab driver and _shit_ he was gonna notice the perception filter on her she had to get it off and herself out before he saw _—_

A long time ago in her personal timeline, maybe like, two years ago on Earth, she’d told Rose that she could feel the turn of the Earth. She could still feel it, if she tried; everything hurtling through space, spinning on its axis, while the humans on this silly little planet felt nothing at all.

Well, now she could keenly feel the Earth spinning beneath her, because dress shoes did not have a good grip on ice, and she bonked her head a bit on the pavement.

On the bright side, she did manage to pocket the TARDIS key. On the downside, Saxon had absolutely seen her fall and her cover was definitely burned. Looked like the Plan was kicking off early.

The universe _really_ didn’t play fair, did it?

“Are you all right, madam?”

Another human thing she really had to get used to: reacting to female terms of address.

Harold Saxon stood over her, polite concern on his face, and offering a gloved hand for her to take. She shook her head slowly and grimaced, but waved her free hand in dismissal.

“It’s nothing, thank you, I’m fine!” she said, injecting a cheerful tone.

She sat up and leapt back onto her feet, briefcase still firmly in hand, then scanned the ground and toed the dark sheen of ice that had given her away. Traitor.

Saxon stared at her with a look any normal human would pin as condescending, and then forget about it when he smiled charmingly and exuded his usual hypnotism that made everyone want to trust him. Fortunately, the Doctor was not a normal human and had the inherent mental fortitude to resist, no matter how warm the Master’s smile seemed to be.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” he said casually, his eyes boring into hers suspiciously. “Are you a new tenant?”

“Oh, I’m just looking for now,” she shook the briefcase slightly. “It seems like a very nice place. I’m guessing you live here?”

“I do, on the 19th floor,” he gave another smile, but there was something in his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name’s Harold. Harold Saxon.”

He offered her his hand again, this time to shake. She took it.

 _This_ body really didn’t like touching, but the Doctor rarely got to touch the Master in a way that wasn’t fighting over a doomsday device or getting choked off the edge of the Eiffel Tower. Missy was perfectly happy to be overly tactile, but the eyebrows had been even less of a touchy-feely type than her current self.

His grip was firm and tangible and in the moment it grounded her to the present. She was here. _They_ were here. In 2007. In an alternate universe that was basically the same as her own but just slightly different enough that she could maybe interfere from the sidelines and spare a lot of people a lot of pain and trauma and death.

And here the Master was, staring into her eyes, completely unaware of who she really was, helping her up after who he believed was a silly little human slipped on ice in front of him.

She could almost believe he were kind if he wasn’t radiating condescension off every movement in his body.

Her hearts beat like the drums in his head, and she flashed a cheery, simple human smile.

“Jane,” she said. “My name is Jane Foreman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't have any explanation for this either. feel free to direct any supplementary screaming to my tumblr [@thoscheian](https://thoscheian.tumblr.com/).
> 
> yes the thing about water was a reference to the 'Master' Big Finish audio. i did like max 3 google searches for the 2007 stuff so i'm definitely wrong about some sort of detail (probably the EDGE thing)
> 
> also yes the implication is that all of this rambling narration is actually thirteen mumbling to herself (not all of it, but a lot of it)


End file.
